


Meeting People in all the Wrong Places (Not Like I go to the Right Ones)

by Kartaylir



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: A little bit of wound tending, Extra Treat, M/M, Rishi (Star Wars), Sith Pureblood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:26:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22608496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kartaylir/pseuds/Kartaylir
Summary: While captured on Rishi, Theron Shan encounters an Imperial agent who's been looking into Order of Revan. Someone who might help him sway Theron's captors into a false sense of security.
Relationships: Male Imperial Agent | Cipher Nine/Theron Shan
Comments: 6
Kudos: 43
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Meeting People in all the Wrong Places (Not Like I go to the Right Ones)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wednesday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wednesday/gifts).



Rishi had sounded like such a good idea at the time. Keep their heads down, look out for the whole Revan cult thing, enjoy the beaches. And the drinks. And more of the speeder racing than he’d ever have admitted to Lana.

Was her own fault if she hadn’t guessed.

Well, a lot of things were her fault. Including the predicament that was currently taking up more and more of Theron’s thoughts in a way that was edging into panic. He forced himself to look down, to let his implants evaluate the pattern of bruises across his hands, arms, lower legs. At least he’d been unconscious for whatever produced the drag marks. 

The same could not be said for the marks on his chest, the imprint of a boot over his constant ache of his rib cage. Or the way the cut above one brow and his split lip kept opening back up to spill blood into his mouth and eye.

“See I’m getting the good tour,” he muttered at the guards as they shoved him along. One of them hit him in the side again and he winced, spit out a little of the blood in their direction. “What’s the cantina like? Best drinks?”

He’d already braced himself before the next blow hit his side. This one crunched a datacard hidden in his jacket, sent fragments of it down to dust the duracrete beneath him.

If anyone bothered following he’d at least left a little of a trail. And if not, well, he wasn’t going to go quietly. 

Finally the so-called tour ended with him being shoved not into the cell he’d expected, but what looked to be almost guest quarters. Actual furniture and painted walls, though there were no computers within and he could hear a chime as the guards locked the door behind him. 

He didn’t see a bed in the first room, but a plush couch was pushed up against one of the walls. Frayed pillows added accents of gold to its black surface, but it was the figure seated upon it that most drew Theron’s eye. 

A Sith, his eyes closed in meditation. A patch of kolto covered his cheek, and purple bruises crept out around its edges. Small cuts were scattered across his face, amid the red spikes that jutted out from jaw and brow. His clothing was black, cut in such a fashion as to resemble a military uniform with no insignia. 

“What’d you do to get the luxury accommodations?” Theron asked, pointedly staying on the other side of the room. He didn’t know just what the Revanites had pulled to shove him in with a Sith but it didn’t make him confident.

The Sith’s eyes snapped open, revealing them to be as crimson as his skin. “You must be Agent Shan,” he said, and his voice seemed far too calm. 

“Great, you’ve heard of me.” Theron said. He looked down from those eyes, and allowed his gaze to settle on the hands of the man before him. The pattern of calluses there was odd; it matched that of someone who favored a blaster. Not the usual choice of anyone from the Empire with access to the force.

“You have a tendency to make yourself notable.”

Theron tapped his teeth together and got nothing from his implants. Just his luck they’d be fried too. But then, he didn’t really need the information from them to guess. “Didn’t think most of the Sith kept track of me,” he said. “Not that you’re one of them; you’d be recruited or under tighter security if so.”

A muscle in the Sith’s cheek twitched. “I see you’ve also an interesting way of making friends.”

Theron couldn’t really argue with that. 

“Fortunately,” the Sith, in at least one sense of the word, said, “I wasn’t sent here on the cause of friendship.” He stood and folded his hands together behind his back. Again, more a military pose than a sith one. And one that emphasized just how much height he had on Theron.

“Then why are you here?” Theron took a step back.

“Hunting the rumored traitor: Lana Beniko.”

Theron attempted to take another step back and found himself pressed against the wall. His legs had started to object to...well, to everything that had happened of late, and even that single step made them ache. “What do you mean by ‘rumored’?”

“That I’m capable of observing the evidence before—” the Sith, the other prisoner, cut himself short and then moved forward, leaned in close enough that spikes brushed across Theron’s brow. The next words were a whisper. “That someone here wished to use intelligence for their own ends.”

“You’re with Imp—Sith Intelligence,” Theron whispered back in turn. _And as blind to the force as I am._

“Cipher Nine, at your service. Now play along; the guards think I’m here to tempt you.” As close as they were, he hardly needed to move to pull Theron into a kiss. 

His breath was dry, his lips warm. Theron could feel the faint pressure of a spike against his cheek. He opened his lips in turn, let his tongue explore the gentle ridges within his foe’s, his ally’s mouth. He felt a hand brush across his face, a tingle as clawed fingers ran over the implants in his brow.

He almost regretted it when the other spy pulled away, if only because it deprived him of someone else to lean on. And well, he’d run out of good choices after Manaan. Maybe earlier. This at least could be an enjoyable bad one.

“If you’re going to seduce me could you at least patch me up first?” Theron said, and the words didn’t come out quite as much of a question as he’d intended. 

“Impatient, aren’t you?” Cipher Nine wrapped an arm around Theron’s shoulder, pointed down the hallway with his free hand. “I suppose I’ve a bit of Kolto, though I was starting to like your bruised look.”

“You and half the galaxy. Maybe I should start accessorizing.” Theron leaned into that support, and let it take some of the weight from his battered limbs. His head tipped to the side to brush against the Cipher’s fingers. 

Something tingled again over his skin, across the powerless metal and circuits of his implants. Whatever it was had been hidden well enough beneath the Cipher’s skin, some technique of subdermal implants or masked cybernetics. Whatever it was had returned just a little power to his own systems. He could see faint blue circles when he pressed his teeth together, and one simple message: _‘I’ll get you to a computer; they believe me too mercurial to allow me more.’_

Despite himself, Theron smiled. “Shame you can’t just wiggle your hands and Force-whatever the bruises away. But I’ll take what I can get.” It wasn’t a good way to show gratitude, but then he’d never been one for the most genial of approaches.

A spike jammed into his shoulder as the Cipher twitched, but neither of them said anything more until they reached a room at the end of the hall that held a few piles of rations and some medkits. A closed door led on the other side led to what might have been anything from the bedroom to the refresher. 

The Cipher Agent pulled open one of the medkits with practised ease. He quickly chose a selection of bandages and a small pack of gel, then looked over to Theron and raised a pointed eyebrow. “Take off your shirt. I need to make sure they didn’t damage any of your ribs.”

“I do remember what that feels like,” Theron said, but it was a weak protest. He tugged his jacket and then the battered shirt beneath off, and found a few new tears on the shirt in the process. 

He fell quiet at least as the Cipher brushed hints of Kolto across his chest. The heat of those hands, the trickle of warmth as nails near as sharp as claws ran across his skin. The Cipher’s touch was delicate across every single bruise; he pressed his lips together and tilted his head as he considered the way such marks interlaced together across Theron’s chest.

“If you’re going to keep staring like that I’ll put the shirt back on.”

That made the Cipher grin, an expression that might have been more reassuring if it didn’t also emphasize all the little spikes upon his face. The way just a few strands of dark hair had escaped to drape down across his forehead. “Your rib cage seems intact. A bit of Kolto should account for the rest; despite the lack of civility from the guards.”

He wasn’t about to admit it, but those words made Theron breathe a little easier. Until he felt the cool hints of Kolto across his skin, the way his flesh prickled beneath the Cipher’s touch.

They didn’t teach those sorts of lessons at _Sith_ Intelligence.

“Turn around,” the Cipher said. “It looks as if they dragged you over something; I should at least cover the wounds.”

“People like that, no wonder they couldn’t afford you.” Theron turned around nonetheless. From this position he couldn’t really see the figure behind him, just a vague crimson shadow and the touch of far too gentle hands across his wounds. 

It was almost enough to compensate for the part where Lana had let him get captured. Almost.

He flinched as a bandage was wrapped across the back of his shoulder, tight enough to keep him from stretching. A few flickers of light dashed across his eyes as his teeth pressed together.

“There you go,” the Cipher said. He stepped back into Theron’s field of view and smiled again. “Do you think you could be convinced to speak to someone? They don’t have a proper holocomm in these rooms.”

“I—mmf—sec—” Theron’s voice was muffled by his shirt as he pulled it back on. The tears in it just kept getting bigger.

“Tell them I want to speak to someone in charge of someplace bigger than this shithole. Sure there’s someone they can call.” Theron folded his arms across his chest and attempted to look stern.

“I’m sure they can be convinced; it’s not as if you can do much with your implants fried.” The Cipher, in contrast, said such with a perfectly straight face.

Theron had to uncross his arms to put his jacket back on. Then he paused to look over at the Cipher. Grinned just a little too widely. “Think they’ll believe it more if you put on another show of seducing me,” Theron said.

There was no hesitation. Just a moment of pressure against his back as the Cipher pulled on the front of his shirt. The sound of tearing fabric; the shirt was hardly a loss at all.

“I’ll make it a good show,” Cipher Nine said. And then, again, for a moment all Theron needed concern himself with was the taste of those lips. 


End file.
